made after regular business hours when vibrations and temperature fluctuations in the building are minimized. Therefore, it is a serious impediment to both progress and a collaborative spirit that new employees, and particularly foreign visitors and employees, often face 5 to 14 months for background checks by an agency outside of NIST before being allowed to run their experiments after hours (when the best data are usually taken). Addressing this issue would be in line with the American Competitiveness Initiative goal of increasing the ability of the United States to compete and retain the most highly skilled workers from around the world.

The security rules for computers mandated through the Office of Management and Budget should be examined to address the specific needs of the laboratory.

Bookmark this page

Important Notice

As of 2013, the National Science Education Standards have been replaced by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), available as a print book, free PDF download, and online with our OpenBook platform.